A man reportedly bought a hotel just to spy on guests, and a journalist kept his secret for decades

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A man named Gerald Foos reportedly bought a hotel in Aurora, Colorado, in the 1960s and set up an elaborate system to spy on guests, and then kept a meticulous diary of what he saw, including their sexual activity.

We know this because in 1980, Foos wrote a letter to famous journalist Gay Talese confessing what he had done, and invited Talese to join him in his hidey-hole.

Talese signed an agreement to keep the spying secret until Foos said it was OK to share the story, which he did in 2013.

It all finally came out in this week's edition of The New Yorker, and the story will give you shivers.

According to Talese, Foos had been a voyeur from a young age, and his wife knew about his habit. When they bought the hotel together — the year was either 1966 or 1969, as the records are apparently inconsistent — he climbed up and carved large holes in the ceiling above the beds in several guest rooms, then had special "ventilation" grates made so he could look down into the rooms without guests noticing, the story says. He installed a padded carpet that ran the length of the attic over the hotel, and then got down to his spying, which he reportedly continued until selling the hotel in 1995.

Foos never recorded or filmed his guests, and he seems to have seen himself as a historical documentarian of sex practices along the lines of an Alfred Kinsey, Talese writes.

Talese also reports that Foos claims to have witnessed a murder in 1977, but the Aurora police couldn't find a record of any killing in the hotel, and there's some question whether Foos might have made it up. Indeed, Talese writes that if he hadn't seen Foos' setup for himself, he would've found it hard to believe the entire story.

The story is fascinating to read, and also raises an ethical question. Talese says he knew about the motel and what was going on there for 15 years. (Foos patched the holes before selling the motel, and it was demolished in 2014.)

Yet Talese took his obligation to his source seriously enough to keep his promise until Foos said it was OK to share it. Does that make Talese morally complicit in the ongoing crime?